Color contrast [was: [ANN] Simple RPN Calculator on RevOnline]

[J. Landman Gay]

On 10/14/10 12:35 PM, FlexibleLearning wrote:

> As for light grey on dark grey, I find it much less abbrasive on the eye
> than "black on white" for a user interface but I would not want to read a
> book using it. My current app development uses such a color scheme and
> reports so far are positive.

I'm sure that's the case, since so many companies are doing it. I'd 
think they wouldn't have made the decision without user feedback, so I 
guess it must work for a lot of people. I don't deny the initial impact 
is elegant, it looks very slick.

But if your vision isn't perfect, it's horrible. I don't think user 
studies included many people with imperfect vision. Or else they decided 
to sacrifice those people in favor of the rest of the normal population.

Length of display also matters. In LiveCode's installer it doesn't 
bother me much because the installer is only on screen a brief period of 
time and I'm willing to squint to get through it because it's short. 
Photoshop's all-encompassing grey color scheme drives me crazy because 
it is always there for as long as I am using the program. After half an 
hour or so, my eyes start to tear. To complicate things, as monitor 
resolutions get larger, everything on screen gets smaller, which 
exacerbates the problem with grey text. Grey text just isn't as sharp as 
black text on white. For grey on grey, I need the text to be about 20 
points or so on my current monitor. I can deal with black text on white 
at much smaller point sizes.

I agree with you that the lawsuit won't succeed -- and I suspect it 
won't even be filed. It was more a complaint by the customer than 
anything else. (And just to re-clarify, I'm not talking about RR, it's a 
different company.)

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com